


there's always room in life for this

by helenecixous



Category: Political Animals
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 10:58:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10615473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helenecixous/pseuds/helenecixous
Summary: You’re Susan Berg, there’s a block of ice where your heart once was, and even now, you’ll do almost anything to advance your career. Almost anything, except for throwing Elaine Barrish under the bus, except for telling the entire world that she’s not straight, because there’s something in your stomach that feels like jealousy.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elainebarrish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elainebarrish/gifts).



> this whole thing came to me while i was in the shower idk.  
> it's for alex, bc obviously it's for alex. lov u
> 
> title from extreme ways - moby

Perhaps, under different circumstances, having Elaine Barrish standing in your office at three thirty in a morning would’ve been cause for a silent, gut churning, butterfly-conjuring celebration. But this… This is definitely not. You barely have time to be annoyed at how she’s looks so put together - yes, makeupless, and yes, her hair’s tied back, and yes, those are  _ sweatpants  _ that she’s wearing, but she’s not sleep-addled, not bleary eyed. On the contrary, she’s alternating between looking at you and your laptop with that sharp, alert gaze you think she was born with.

The offending object is between you, on your desk, sad and lonely looking as it illuminates her stony expression and your worried one with that cold blue light.

“Well?” Elaine asks. Demands, really. “Are you going to run it?”

“No,” you answer quickly. Perhaps too quickly.  _ Definitely  _ too quickly. She narrows her eyes, and you don’t blame her. You wouldn’t trust you either, even though it has been seven months. Seven months with no double crossing or backstabbing. But then, (and now you wish you’d taken it down before she came), you do have a Pulitzer on your shelf that was conjured - you refused to say earned anymore - by years of grinding Elaine Barrish’s name into the dirt with one perfectly sharp, gleaming Louboutin.

So you add: “why would I run a story that does nothing but use a community I’m part of to besmirch you? It’s not the sixties anymore, Elaine, presidential candidates don’t get to be sabotaged just because they’re not straight anymore.” And yes, that was a small reference to yourself:  _ a community I’m part of.  _ You want her to know that you’re not straight either, although you’ll be dead before you admit to yourself that you want her to know that. “Unless you want me to run it. I can spin it so that you’ll be the, thus far unsung, LGBT hero slash politician that we’ve been waiting for. Not that you need that extra publicity, they all already love you because of TJ.” God, you’re tired. You can’t remember when you stuck your head into a bucket of sand, but you must have done, because your eyes are so gritty they’re in danger of falling out.

A silence spins out between you, and you’re too nervous to let it settle, so you let a small chuckle bubble into the space and rub your neck before you gesture lamely to the laptop.

“So it’s true? You had a girlfriend in college?”

Elaine nods tersely, as though you don’t already know, as though that email to you from her ex girlfriend doesn’t exist. As though it doesn’t start with a brief paragraph detailing how she knows you to be the journalist most likely to want to bring Elaine Barrish’s campaign to an abrupt and vicious halt. Where’s the woman been for the past seven months, you think. You, Susan Berg, newly appointed member of the Barrish family. You, Susan Berg, grudgingly falling for the, apparently bisexual, hopefully soon-to-be president.

It’s enough to make you laugh, that just one year ago you’d have jumped at this email, jumped at it with a craze in your eyes and foam dripping from your lips. God, you’d have destroyed her with this, you’d have won another Pulitzer, you’d have been able to stop writing about the designers she wears, to stop writing about her weak will, about her refusal to throw her scummy ex husband to the curb. You’d have been able to drop the smokescreen of feminism and attack her from an entirely different angle, because yes, the community reason for not running this story was bullshit. You’re Susan Berg, there’s a block of ice where your heart once was, and even now, you’ll do almost anything to advance your career. Almost anything, except for throwing Elaine Barrish under the bus, except for telling the entire world that she’s not straight, because there’s something in your stomach that feels like jealousy.

Funny, how these things work out.

“Do you want me to run it?” you ask. “Are you going to tell your family? TJ will be pleased.”

“Don’t run it,” she says, and there’s a little waver of tiredness in her voice. “Like you said, I’ve already got the LGBT plus community on my side. It won’t do anything but harm the campaign, no matter how you spin it.”

You nod, look down at your nails, at the nail varnish that you’re picking off absent mindedly. “Do you want me to reply to her? Or I can just delete it.”

“What would you say? What is there to say?”

You can think of a thousand things you want to say to her. “You’re right.” You reach forward, tap the delete button, watch as it flies to the deleted folder. And then you open that, and delete it from there too. In front of her, because you know that’s what she’d wanted. That’s why she came, because she could’ve told you over the phone to delete it, and then she’d have spent the rest of her life wondering whether or not you had.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

She looks around your office, and you wince when her gaze lingers on your trophy, the one that sits high and proud and dusty on the top of your shelves. She just shakes her head a little, and then her gaze finds you again, and suddenly you want to grovel. You want to apologise, properly, to explain yourself, but the word ‘sorry’ is one that tastes sour and false in your mouth. You’re Susan Berg, and you don’t apologise. You just stay at her side, get coffee without her asking, and you don’t run stories that hurt her anymore.

And in return, she accepts your silent non-apologies, gives you scoops, lets you run them before Bud even knows, and doesn’t mention any of the shit you’d said about her previously. Bygones, you think. They’re bygones. And she’s going to be president, she’s leading by a crazy wide margin in all of the polls, and you’re a top flight journalist. You’re almost jealous of yourself.

“You’d think that they’d have given you a bigger office,” she says, quietly.

“They did offer. I turned it down, I like the windows. Like being able to see what’s going.”

She laughs, a soft little titter. “Of course you do.” And then she’s picking up her car keys, bidding you goodnight, and she’s gone.

You sit down in your desk chair, lean back and listen to the echo of the doors closing behind her. Your office smells like her perfume, something nondescript and probably extortionately expensive, and it’s hard to believe that you used to hate her, especially now that she makes your heart race and your cheeks heat up. You exhale, shake that train of thought away. That’s not something you want to get into right now, especially now you know what you know about her. You feel like you’re freefalling, because the only two things that had really worked to keep you grounded and focused was that one, you thought she was straight, and two, that she would never fall for you anyway.

And now you know that the first point is very suddenly redundant.

And you’re too sure of yourself, too confident to actually properly believe the second. The second relied on the first, and now you’re fucked. And you can feel it happen, feel the cogs turn, feel the exact moment that you become something else, switch on the charm, and you’re groaning to yourself in your office, because operation: seduce Elaine Barrish isn’t a good idea at all. But still, you smile, because there’s nobody here to tell you that this idea is an objectively terrible one. It’s just you, your laptop, and your fucking Pulitzer, which you take down, and shut in one of the drawers of your desk.

You eye your laptop like it’s going to start talking to you, and mutter, “you believe in me, don’t you, buddy?”

It responds with baleful silence, and you shut the lid, throw it into your bag, and lock up thinking of Elaine Barrish and what it’s going to be like to finally go to sleep.

 

You wake up to your phone vibrating and your landline ringing. You grab your mobile because it’s closest, and press it to your ear, your eyes still shut. “Mm?”

“Did you know about Mom?”

“TJ.” You squint at the clock to the side of your bed. “It’s fucking nine in the morning.”

“Yeah, and you were meant to be here for Mom’s meeting with the Russian Ambassador at eight. But did you know? She says you know, but she could be lying to make sure I didn’t ring you.”

“Shit!” You sit up, throw the duvet off you, and almost trip as you try to get to the bathroom with a blanket that’s somehow managed to wrap itself around your ankle. “Motherfucker!”

“It’s alright,” TJ says, and you can hear the smirk in his voice. You want to strangle the little shit. “Mom’s not mad. She said you had a long night.”

“Yeah, well, she might tell  _ you _ that she’s not mad, but she’ll give me that  _ look _ , and I’m gonna have to quit.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, I’ll have to quit and move to, move to fucking England.”

“England, huh? That’s quite a way.”

“Shut up, TJ,” you hiss, trying to sort out your sleep mussed hair. You’ve got sheet imprints on your face, eyeliner on your fucking cheek. “If I kill you, there’d be no other journalist to report it. No one would know.”

“Aw.” He laughs, and you hear the fridge door shut, and then he’s opening something and it’s loud enough to deafen you. “You’re cute when you’re flustered. I don’t think you should move to England, Mom would be pretty upset.” He pauses, and then calls, “Mom! Susan’s moving to England!”

“You little  _ shit-”  _ You pause from scrubbing your cheek with a baby wipe, try to hear what she says. The eyeliner is so thick and sticky, all you want to do is go back to bed.

“Why is she moving to England?” Her voice is amused, tiny, somewhere in the background, and you imagine her looking at him with one eyebrow raised and a small smirk on her face.

“I dunno,” TJ says, and he’s crunching something. Maybe an apple?

“TJ-” you warn, but he ignores you.

“Maybe it’s because she’s in love with you, or something. Oh, that and she missed your meeting today.”

You have to be dreaming. That’s the only thing that would explain this, because you can hear Elaine laughing, telling TJ off for eating cereal straight from the box, and he’s so annoyingly nonchalant. You’re either dreaming, or you’re about to be fired. You really will have to move to England, goddamn it. And you’ve never really enjoyed the rain.

“Is she coming in today?”

“Susan? Are you coming in today? Mom wants to know.”

“I can hear,” you say through gritted teeth, and resume scrubbing your cheek until the smudge has gone and your face is a merry shade of hell. “Yes, I’ll be there in about an hour.”

“She’ll be here in about an hour.”

“Good. Tell her I need her to start working on a new story.”

“Mom said she needs you to-”

“Bye, TJ,” you say, and hang up before the little bastard can actually give you a heart attack. Elaine wouldn’t believe him, would she? Although she is perceptive, and you’ve never been any good at being subtle. “I’m Susan Berg,” you mutter, get into the shower, “I’m about as subtle as a fucking brick, and yes, I used to be in love with President Barrish, the first female President of the United States of America, and then she fired me, because her asshole son couldn’t keep his mouth shut and I couldn’t keep it in my pants. Nice to meet you.”

 

“Elaine- I slept through my alarm, all three of them,  _ God.”  _ You’re slightly out of breath, and lamely you hold out a Starbucks cup for her.

She smiles at you, and it works to alleviate some of your crippling anxiety. “So, you decided that stopping by at Starbucks, being later than you were already, would help you how?”

“Well, I was already late.” You brush your hair from your face, lean on the back of the chair that’s in front of you, and grin. “I figured I may as well soften the blow, right?”

She sips her drink by way of answer, and gestures for you to sit down.

“So, you told them? Bud?”

“Bud already knew,” Elaine says, looking at you in that slightly patronising way that used to make you fire up and get all indignant. Now it just makes you irritatingly gushy, because she’s  _ looking  _ at you. “You really think that my husband of however many years wouldn’t know that?”

“Well, you’d be surprised,” you say. “Sometimes it just doesn’t come up.”

“It did come up.”

You shrug, lean forward. “What did you want me to run?”

It’s something long winded and steeped in political gain, obviously, and you half miss the days that you spent writing about how tacky Marc Jacobs really is, and  _ why _ does Elaine Barrish  _ insist  _ on wearing it, no matter how amazing it makes her figure look. (You’ve since realised that Elaine’s figure is amazing, whether she’s in designer gear or not. But still…  _ Marc Jacobs.)  _ But you make notes, discuss angles with her, do your job. Because even while you might be distracted by her lips and the lines around her eyes and the way her hair frames her face and her jawline and her hands, you are, first and foremost, a journalist. It’s just that the view today is exceeding expectations. No big deal.

 

And it’s no big deal later, when you’re packing up your notepad and laptop, checking your pockets for your keys and phone, when she sidles up to you, leans on the kitchen counter, and asks if you want to go for a drink later.

“Really?” you ask, pulling out your compact to touch up your lipstick. “You don’t care about the paparazzi today? Whose birthday is it? Shit, have I missed a birthday?”

Elaine shakes her head, and smiles at you fondly. “I thought we could go to yours,” she says. “Have a few drinks, watch some shit TV. My brain’s been scrambled today, it’d be nice to get away from it.”

You blink at her. “Uh, yeah. Course. Yeah, of course. Absolutely. I think my alcohol cabinet is pretty well-stocked.”

With the way your heart is racing, you reckon you might actually die tonight. This is very much the definition of a big deal.

 

It’s not the first time she’s been in your flat. It’s just the first time she’s been there  _ alone,  _ and you have to admit that smuggling her out of her house was more fun than you’d originally anticipated. At home you don’t have any mildly offensive awards sitting around, you just have dirty mugs scattered about the place, an unmade bed with potentially murderous blankets stretched out half way across the floor, and a couch that oozes stuffing when you sit down on it. You’ll never get rid of that couch, you tell her as she sits down and pushes the stuffing back into one of the holes near her thigh.

“Sentimental value?” she calls as you emerge from the kitchen with two takeout menus and two glasses of wine.

“Not really. It’s just the most comfortable couch I’ve ever owned.” You want to tell her that you don’t get attached to things because of sentiment, that practicalities always come first, but you realise that isn’t true. Being in love with the future president isn’t  _ practical,  _ and yet here you are. Valuing her above pretty much all else, because of sentiment. God, feelings are disgusting. They’ll ruin you one day, you’re sure of it. But somehow, dying in the fires of Elaine Barrish doesn’t sound like the most awful way to go at all.

You pass her a glass of wine and a menu. “I figured we could get Chinese,” you say, instead of declaring your love for her. But on the other hand, offering to buy somebody Chinese takeout is practically the same thing, right? Maybe even better.

“A woman after my own heart,” she says, sipping her wine as she peruses the menu, and you open yours too but you already know what you’re going to order. In nine years, your order hasn’t changed once, and so you take the time to watch her, watch her melt and soften and blur at the edges, because here she isn’t a candidate, she’s not a mom, she’s just a person. And you don’t even know how that happened, but you’re glad that it did.

 

You don’t discuss politics, and for that you’re both glad, and as you promised her you supply wine and shit TV and what’s probably enough Chinese food to last you an entire week. It feels so promisingly domestic, even though you know that there’s no way that this would be your life, even if she does fall for you. Even in that scenario, your life together will be littered with paparazzi and endless security guards and interviews and more politics than you’d know what to do with. But you find that you don’t really mind the thought. That’s the thing about Elaine, and what she means to you - she’d eclipse all of that practical shit, just getting to wake up next to her and feel her bed warmed hands against your skin, to have date nights and wake her up with coffee and breakfast and have little tiffs with her… you think that’d make the whole thing worth it.

You come out of your reverie and realise that she’s looking at you, and you’re one glass of wine past tact. “What?”

She, it turns out, is as well. “If you’d told me one year ago that I’d be drinking wine with Susan Berg, I’d have called you crazy,” she says. “But maybe I am crazy. Maybe this is crazy. You hated me.”

You shake your head, move your legs beneath you. “I never hated you, Elaine.”

“Hm.”

“I didn’t. I just had all of this - this misplaced anger. Seeing Bud and how he treated you, all I wanted was to wake up one morning and read a story telling me that you’d finally got rid. And I was so frustrated with that, so angry about the message that was sending to little girls all around the country - that a man could do that to a woman, even a woman as amazing, as incredible and smart and headstrong and beautiful as you, and still get to go to events with you on his arm. But now I get it, I know you.”

“You still think I’m amazing and incredible and smart and beautiful?”

You blush, but shrug. “You forgot headstrong. And yeah. I suppose I do.”

“Is there anything you think of me now that you didn’t then?”

“You’re taller than you look in videos.”

She laughs, and you can  _ feel  _ the air clear. When she looks at you, her expression is so unguarded, so open that you want to kiss her more than you’ve ever wanted to kiss anyone in your life. Presidential campaign be damned.

It just takes minutes of a loaded silence, and she does it for you. She leans forward, pauses for a second, lets you lean in, and then she kisses you. For the first time in your life, your mind goes blank, and then floods with one thought:  _ Elaine fucking Barrish. _

You break apart, and it could be minutes later, or hours later, for all you know. “Was that a political move?” you whisper, grinning.

“Are you gonna run it?”

“Are you buying my silence?”

She smiles, kisses you again, kisses you apart, and you let her lead. You let her take you places with her lips that you didn’t know you could get to, and you think your heart might just burst from your chest. She tastes like Chinese food and wine and something minty, and you think that you’ll never be able to eat chicken chow mein again without blushing.

Later, you’ll talk about it. You’ll need to, but as she pulls you closer and you both separate only to move the food to the floor, you don’t have to think of anything but your lipstick on her skin and how this couch may have some sentimental value, after all.


End file.
